2021 Apr 25 - Superleague & Biden Going Green
Exciting times in the world of sport this week after 3 days saw the rise and sudden collapse of a proposed European football super-league. If only Roman Abramovich had been in charge of the Brexit negations then we could have been out 48 hours after the referendum result. The week started with the announcement that 12 elite football clubs were going be starting up a new league which would play games midweek, as a compliment to the existing Saturday games. Depending who you spoke to this included 5 top ranked Premiere League clubs plus Tottenham. Or 5 top clubs, plus Arsenal. You get the idea. There were also some Spanish and Italian teams but nobody from France and apparently Bayern Munich were apparently all for it until they discovered that it said European Super League and not Super-race, so no German teams either. Anyway, fans didn’t like the idea, stating that Tottenham should spending money rebuilding a new squad, not constructing a 2nd trophy cabinet to collect dust and I’d certainly not seen a gunner that angry since the bloke up in that Las Vegas hotel a few years back. Anyway, by Wednesday the teams were dropping faster than political dissidents in Russia and the project swiftly collapsed, queue yet more sporting metaphors. The public are now being dangled the prospect that it could be revived with the Premiere league being reimagined as a UK-wide event with Rangers and Celtic being invited along. That’s a project that for the past 30 years plus has been primarily reserved for being discussed in the pub by the bloke at the end of the bar. The only real upside to that plan really would be that the English fans could finally benefit from the free weekly education on Irish history, King William, and the Pope. Liverpool still sting that song by Gerry & The Pacemakers but Celtic’s discography goes back 3 centuries.
Elsewhere in America there was news as Joe Biden announced that the US is going to cut carbon emissions by a half by 2030, describing it as a ‘Once in a century opportunity’ in so much as the taxpayers will be on the hook on it for the next hundred years. Cutting emissions in half is a bit like you or I saying we’re going to drop 2 stone by the end of the year. Very easily to say but utterly ludicrous without a major change in policy, none of which has been given in any proper scrutiny. Going back to the football story, it’s like a bottom-rung club hiring a new manger who claims that he’ll win the Champions League next season without explaining how, all whilst the fans sit around nodding. If we give President Biden the benefit of the doubt and somehow pretend that the money isn’t going to be an issue, where are the cuts actually going to come from? Banning air conditioning in the south? Perhaps banning the sale of new heating systems in Michigan where the winters are 20° below? These are all actually ideas being seriously proposed, generally by the same people that claim that mathematics should be banned from schools - that’s a real thing, look it up. In context, the city of Houston alone has a GDP larger than the UAE and it’s similarly reliant on oil for that money, which the President is wanting to turn off in the way that you or I would turn off if we saw that Ant & Dec were coming on after the break. Forget about healthcare or guns, the environmental movement is far more likely to cause the US to break up, because why on earth would midwestern states commit economic suicide when they can just say no happily go on trading with Asia. In the meantime. Part of the proposals being discussed see China promising peak carbon by 2030 which by definition means that it is actively promising to increase its carbon emissions every single year until the end of the decade. Or worse, perhaps their plan is to continue beyond that but offset it by eliminating those from Tibet and Taiwan. Perhaps Joe’s plan is to half the US emissions by encouraging all the Trump-voting states to leave the country. That would be 25 states, 50% exactly.
Elsewhere in America there was news as Joe Biden announced that the US is going to cut carbon emissions by a half by 2030, describing it as a ‘Once in a century opportunity’ in so much as the taxpayers will be on the hook on it for the next hundred years. Cutting emissions in half is a bit like you or I saying we’re going to drop 2 stone by the end of the year. Very easily to say but utterly ludicrous without a major change in policy, none of which has been given in any proper scrutiny. Going back to the football story, it’s like a bottom-rung club hiring a new manger who claims that he’ll win the Champions League next season without explaining how, all whilst the fans sit around nodding. If we give President Biden the benefit of the doubt and somehow pretend that the money isn’t going to be an issue, where are the cuts actually going to come from? Banning air conditioning in the south? Perhaps banning the sale of new heating systems in Michigan where the winters are 20° below? These are all actually ideas being seriously proposed, generally by the same people that claim that mathematics should be banned from schools - that’s a real thing, look it up. In context, the city of Houston alone has a GDP larger than the UAE and it’s similarly reliant on oil for that money, which the President is wanting to turn off in the way that you or I would turn off if we saw that Ant & Dec were coming on after the break. Forget about healthcare or guns, the environmental movement is far more likely to cause the US to break up, because why on earth would midwestern states commit economic suicide when they can just say no happily go on trading with Asia. In the meantime. Part of the proposals being discussed see China promising peak carbon by 2030 which by definition means that it is actively promising to increase its carbon emissions every single year until the end of the decade. Or worse, perhaps their plan is to continue beyond that but offset it by eliminating those from Tibet and Taiwan. Perhaps Joe’s plan is to half the US emissions by encouraging all the Trump-voting states to leave the country. That would be 25 states, 50% exactly.
Exciting times in the world of sport this week after 3 days saw the rise and sudden collapse of a proposed European football super-league. If only Roman Abramovich had been in charge of the Brexit negations then we could have been out 48 hours after the referendum result. The week started with the announcement that 12 elite football clubs were going be starting up a new league which would play games midweek, as a compliment to the existing Saturday games. Depending who you spoke to this i ......